One of Jean-Paul Sartre's most important works was "Existentialism is a Humanism" — so are all existentialists humanists? Are all humanists also existentialists? Not necessarily — there is a close affinity between existentialism and humanism, but they aren't quite the same thing. Still, Sartre's point is a valid one and deserves to be considered.
The easiest way to do that is to quote Sartre himself:
- “I have been reproached for suggesting that existentialism is a form of humanism: people have said to me, “But you have written in your Nausée that the humanists are wrong, you have even ridiculed a certain type of humanism, why do you now go back upon that?” In reality, the word humanism has two very different meanings.”
- “One may understand by humanism a theory which upholds man as the end-in-itself and as the supreme value. Humanism in this sense appears, for instance, in Cocteau’s story Round the World in 80 Hours, in which one of the characters declares, because he is flying over mountains in an airplane, “Man is magnificent!” This signifies that although I, personally, have not built aeroplanes I have the benefit of those particular inventions and that I, personally, being a man, can consider myself responsible for, and honored by, achievements that are peculiar to some men. It is to assume that we can ascribe value to man according to the most distinguished deeds of certain men.”
- “That kind of humanism is absurd, for only the dog or the horse would be in a position to pronounce a general judgment upon man and declare that he is magnificent, which they have never been such fools as to do - at least, not as far as I know. But neither is it admissible that a man should pronounce judgment upon Man. Existentialism dispenses with any judgment of this sort: an existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and - this must be said - in Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.”
- “But there is another sense of the word, of which the fundamental meaning is this: Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other band, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in relation to his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and center of his transcendence.”
- “There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a human universe) - it is this that we call existential humanism. This is humanism, because we remind man that there is no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for himself; also because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of some particular realisation, that man can realize himself as truly human.”
We find that Sartre rejects any connection between humanism and existentialism if humanism means putting humanity on a pedestal and declaring that, because of the achievement of a few individuals, all human beings are thereby exalted. This is not to deny those achievements or even to deny that any individuals could achieve similar things — on the contrary, this is merely the insistence that no one is made better by anything other than their own actions.
The key, for existentialists, is the ability of people to make the proper choices in their lives. There is no single human nature which limits us in what we can do; according to Sartre, we are all radically free and capable of doing whatever they want. It is the affirmation of humanity’s freedom which, for Sartre, is the only appropriate humanism we should follow.
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